Stemming a Red Tide

PMS: Pardon My Sobbing, Pass My Sweats, Pissy Mood Syndrome, People Make Me Sick, Plainly; Men Suck…

Maybe this is too personal, so be warned, this blog is about my period. It is just that I have never had a problem with it before, have even enjoyed it really (I know, truly weird) but since having Babou, I have the most terrifying periods I have ever experienced. I now get all the normal symptoms but they seem unduly amplified; the tearing up for no good reason, the unreasonable hunger, the irritation level sky-high. What do you do when you actually want to take off your body like you would a pair of clothes? My brain also could use taking off. I feel the shaving my head, even my hair is irritating me. Imagine wearing a wool sweater 10 sizes too small in the heat of summer. That is how I feel.

And mentally being able to function is ridiculous. I could not make a decision to save my life. Addled brained does not even begin to describe me. I went into the grocery store and had to leave because I couldn’t remember why I’d come. Has this happened to anyone—these symptoms getting worse after baby? Maybe I am a freak of nature, actually I am pretty sure of this, but this is new territory for me and I don’t like it at all. My husband is nervous, too.

And normally I don’t care that much for sweets but boy I do now. I could eat an entire Boston Cream pie (just as I did once, I am not ashamed to admit, while pregnant). I am trying not to veer too far off my diet path but it is HARD.

I remember reading in some hippy self-help type book I am very prone to reading that our menstrual cycles actually are very evolved emotional balancing systems. It described our cycle in terms of wanting to be involved in, or distant from, our world. Our ovulation, obviously, marks our most social moment (hey, those eggs want to get hatched y’know), and then our periods are the moment that we seek our solitude, head to a moss hut, and be alone. I wish I had a hut to spend a week in. Doesn’t that actually sound so civilized? Our periods are our time to tend our garden, so to speak. It brings to light all the irritations of the month, allowing you to process and release and start anew. The book went further to postulate that because of this we are more emotionally evolved than men who have to fester all the way until their midlives to really get it all out of their system. The idea is that we are actually lucky for our monthly cycles as they allow us to be fully present emotionally.

I always thought that was such a beautiful metaphor and would love to uphold it, but in modern life it seems difficult. Today I am going to try to concentrate on finding a way to weave this metaphor into my more modern life and uphold that vision instead of shaving my head and running naked into the hills. Wish me luck!

Home and home

We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.
-Henry David Thoreau

Back, finally! I have been a very poor blogger this past week due to technical difficulties (no internet). I returned yesterday from an over weeklong trip to visit my parents. Not only do they not have internet, they don’t even have electricity in one of their houses! (Instead of one house, they have three small houses on their property.) It was really nice actually, to disconnect for a bit and just be. I have always loved to travel because it gives you such a good perspective, keeps your eyes open and looking, and being away has always given me a fresh vision and renewed inspiration. I guess this is my traveling, as I can’t get away like I used to (one day soon though). Sometimes I feel so inundated with communication that I need time away like I need to breath.

We stayed in the house without electricity. We made fires every night and talked into the evening illuminated by the soft glow of candlelight. We talked about how nice it was to not watch tv, to just have the chance to sit in stillness and connect with one another. If I could, I would light my home in candles and lanterns and not even have a tv. My husband would not take kindly to me taking us back to the 1800’s, he likes his tv a lot! So do I, but I think that it is really nice to be without it more often than not. There is something so centering about it.

I was nice to be back in my hometown but I am glad to be back in my adopted home. I like the energy here. Even if I am being quiet and doing my own thing I still feel like I’m not missing out on anything because I can just look out the window and watch the busy street for a minute—a balm to my restless nature. I love all the options I have here, the variety, the different beauty, the way nature and city combine, the anonymity you get from a city combined with the friendliness of a not-so-big city. For me, this is perfect, sitting still and watching the world go.

Max Weber get off my couch!

The more I see the less I know the more I like to let it go…
-Red Hot Chili Peppers

I am in one of those moments, one of those phases in time where it seems as though time itself disappears before my eyes. I feel like I get up and by the time I finish the essentials, my day is gone and I am left wondering where it went. I feel like I am on this treadmill and it is on an increasing incline but I have to keep up the same pace. I know that I am not unique in this feeling, that I am one of many. Very many. And I also do not think that it is purely because I am now a mother although trying to accomplish things with a baby hanging onto your knees is a challenge, to say the least. I have felt this way before when working full time, and before when going to school full time and working. I have always imagined the next stage of my life would be easier and more relaxed and it has not proved itself as true. I think that the more you try to do, the less you actually do. It’s like the harder you try, the harder it is? And the older I get, the more I realize how much life likes to work in these strange Zen Koans. I am beginning to think that life is trying to teach me a lesson that I refuse to learn: to relax!

I don’t know why it is, although I have some ideas. There is the Protestant Work ethic, of course, that used religion to promote productivity. This work ethic has created an underlying group mentality that urges Americans to do more and more and have more and more. The Protestant Work Ethic said the way we would be judged for heaven would be by our possessions, by what we had accumulated through our lifetime by our hard work. And now we’ve just exchanged the ideal of heaven with keeping up with the Jones’.

Other countries don’t believe in work the way we do. I appreciate those countries, and would love to be like them but I can’t help that I have this protestant work ethic mind set deeply embedded in my consciousness whether I like it or not. I want to get things done so that I can prove I am worthwhile, so that I will be loved and appreciated. But do you know what? I am the luckiest woman in the world because tonight I was snuggled under a blanket watching mindless television. I remarked to my husband how I was so frustrated with myself, there I was with all these things to do and I wasn’t even relaxing with a good book (so I could later check “read good book this week” off my secret list) all I was doing was watching mindless television which did me absolutely no good at all. He looked at me in his quiet way and said “I like to see you doing absolutely nothing especially when it’s mindless because it is relaxing and you SHOULD relax.” Hmmmm. I think that’s unconditional love at its finest. I would like to see me relax, too. Sometimes you have to not do anything in order to get anything done! That said, I think I’m going to get back to my Rachel Ray!

Sexy Lentils?

Yes, another recipe.

Upon reading my comments from yesterday, I discovered a friend in the South Beach diet! Although I dislike the diet (my natural inclination is to include, not exclude, things in my life--particularly wine, cocktails, pasta and bread), it works and I definitly need help with the 50 odd pounds I am still carrying a year after giving birth. I have consequently become very creative in coming up with new and good things to make that stay within the boundaries of Phase 1 (which I have had to go back to since my very fat and happy Christmas).

So I promised a sexy lentil recipe.

Now some of you may think that I am hopelessly optimistic and romantical about lentils, but I am here to say that I am not. When I say sexy I mean exotic and foreign. This lentil salad tastes exotic and foreign (hence sexy) and like a drink that I love which is why I named it…

Mojito Lentil Salad

Lentils, however much you like, I usually have a cup of them, cooked (obviously)
Mix with a little olive oil and lemon and add feta cheese and chopped fresh mint.
Place over mixed greens or eat plain.
Tell me this does not taste fantastic and remind you of a mojito.
And it’s healthy and cheap!

Recipe of the Week

This is one of my favorite recipes because it is quick and easy while looking and tasting impressive.

Pan seared steak with balsamic onions and blue cheese

Steaks, I usually use Rib-Eye or New York and serve one per person (6-8 ounces each)
Red onion, thinly sliced (one per steak)
Balsamic vinegar, 1/4 cup per onion
Blue or gorgonzola cheese, 1/4 cup per steak, or however much you like

Add olive oil and a little butter to a frying pan and set on high heat. While pan is heating, slice onions and salt and pepper steaks. Cook steaks about 3-5 minutes on both sides (for medium/medium rare). Place cooked steaks on plate and let rest while you add onions to same pan and deglaze with balsamic vinegar (add more olive oil at this point also, if need be). Turn down the heat and let onions melt into the vinegar, this usually takes the same amount of time it takes for the steaks to rest before cutting, about 10 minutes. Take the onions and balsamic vinegar off the flame. Slice the steak and top with blue cheese, top blue cheese with balsamic vinegar and onion sauce. You can serve this alone with a salad and roasted potatoes, or you can serve it simply over a bed of salad greens (I like arugula) mixed with a light balsamic dressing: equal portions olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and a little sugar (I actually usually use splenda—it tastes great in this dressing).

Bon appetit!

L'Affaire

I learned early on that setting a table is so much more than just laying down knives and forks. It is creating a setting for food and conversation, a setting and an aura that lingers long after what was served and who said what was forgotten.
-Peri Wolfman


Now that we have gotten to know each other a bit, I think that it is time to tell you something about myself: I have been having an affair for almost as long as I have been with my husband. My husband knows of the affair, sometimes he even watches. We meet every Saturday morning for only half of an hour but to be with him is so sweet, it lifts me through the rest of the week. He is so sauve, efficient, and handsome (as older French men can be). He is very charming. He teaches me new things each week. I am not ashamed. His name is Jacques Pepin!

So now you know one of my true obsessions. I love this man so much that my husband started calling my Saturday mornings with him, my “affair.” I am serious about it. For some reason, I am deeply into Jacques Pepin. I think it is because he inspires me. I love how handsome and well put together he looks on his show. I love the set in which he cooks, there is usually a little bouquet of Japanese Iris’s, a weird little cat statue (also blue), just very French accents. I love how he paints as well as cooks. I love how he spends so much of his time in Mexico. I love his style. His cooking is not only gourmet, but also economical, and healthy.

He reminds me of the French chef I used to work for while I was at the University. He owned the restaurant where I worked and he was there every day without fail with the exception of his one day off a week. He had a loyal following because his food was consistently wonderful, and he created a warm yet formal atmosphere that people loved.

He taught me so much I don’t know how I could ever thank him. So much about food and wine, of course, but he taught me much more by the example he led. He taught me about consistency, about working hard every day at what you love no matter what. Although I would not call him a staunch environmentalist, he taught me about conservation. He is very economically minded (as any good businessman should be) and he taught me how to transform ingredients and not waste. And he always looked so well put together. He had a gin and tonic every night except for one month out of every year. He would take that month off to make sure he was having the gin and tonics and that the gin and tonics were not having him. I always thought that was brilliant.

I think that the nature of a French chef apprenticeship creates the qualities needed in a French a chef and those qualities shine to me as ones that I admire and would like to embody. Even if it is only one morning a week, for a half of an hour!

Thoughts on Biodiversity

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road / the one less traveled by / offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.
-Rachel Carson

It has been a wintry weather-y last couple of weeks that have left me dreaming of warmer days to come. I have been concentrating on seed catalogs and planning my vegetable garden. I have had this dream of an heirloom vegetable garden for some time now. I love the idea of eating vegetables with a history ones that have led their own lives and have grown and adapted over time. I love how beautiful and imperfect they look. I went online to find out more about growing heirlooms and quickly became disheartened by the information that I found. It sounded quite difficult to successfully heirloom garden. Confused with all the information I had found, my head swimming with words like “hybrid,” “GMO,” and “crop yields,” I continued on with my day including reading Authormomwithdogs’s blog. She seemed to be in a similar wintry mood wishing for spring and reading Seeds of Change. Aha, a gardener! I would ask her what she thought! She replied the most succinct and accurate description of the various gardening options I have yet to read. She has inspired me to dip into the heirloom world and not be intimidated. She also made me think A LOT about biodiversity and not just in the plant world.

In school I studied cultural anthropology and religion. I am also lucky enough to have traveled fairly often. I am passionate about people. I am passionate about how different people live and eat and relate to one another and experience and connect with the divine. I think it is beautiful how many paths there are, how many ways of being there are, how much life has to teach us the more we open up to its vastness. I am always fascinated with how differently people experience life, the variety of perspectives there are! That is why I get so…I don’t even know what the word is…disheartened maybe…when I see life being homogenized. Popular American culture seems to promote this way of being. It seems to me that all plastic surgery and the mainstreaming of self-help-type psychology and their resultant talk shows has accomplished is create a homogenous image of health and beauty that does not reflect real life or real emotions. Real life and real emotions are what are interesting and what matter. They are what create great art and push us forward.

It is not the easier path to consciously uphold diversity. Many of those who are the most different from us are our greatest teachers, the ones who finally get us to grow. And growing means changing and change is always uncomfortable. But without those challenges we are unable to grow and adapt.

There is so much beauty in life, in imperfection, in reality, in the messiness of it all. Biodiversity is not only the foundation of life as we know it, it is the je ne sais quoi that makes life worth living.